Before the Freeway Blogger became the infamous,
anonymous man that he is, posting over 2,000 politically charged cardboard
signs all over freeway overpasses in California, he was just your average
guy, frustrated and angry about the war in Iraq. So he did what a lot of
frustrated and angry people do and submitted a letter to his local paper,
the L.A. Times. (He lives in Orange County.) “Nobody died when Clinton
lied,” he wrote and signed his name, a name he won´t give out anymore
because he´s had several death threats.
Suffice to say, the Times didn´t publish his letter to the editor.
“So I said, ‘screw you then, I´ll publish it myself,´” he says from behind
the wheel of his Toyota pick-up truck as we drive through downtown Santa
Cruz. The Blogger is a UC Santa Cruz graduate, and was in town on blogging
business last week. “How many subscribers does your Podunk paper (L.A.
Times) have? A couple of million? Ah, I can beat that number on the 405
freeway alone.”
Thus began the Freeway Blogger´s not-so underground career that in two years
has evolved into a non-paying, full-time job that he can´t seem to quit. (He
supports himself on an inheritance.) In the next few weeks he plans on
hitting some states that will more than likely play a bigger role in the
election, swing states like Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado.
He also has a Web site (www.freewayblogger.com) on the information
superhighway, better known as the Internet. His site has received about
300,000 hits thus far. Ironically, that number is far less than the
countless drivers who´ve seen his signs on the asphalt highways—from
Sacramento to San Diego and points in-between. (For the non-geek, blogs are
Internet message boards where people, or bloggers as they´re called, can
post their unfettered opinions.) And like any self-respecting guerilla
activist, the Freeway Blogger has a publicist who has a real name and a
phone number.
“Way back when you could take what you had to say to the town square and
people would gather around and listen,” says his publicist, attorney Sev
Williams. “But these days where people congregate is on the freeways, the
town squares of today. He´s out there expressing himself in a way that is
reaching millions of people and he´s making people think about the issues.”
Reaching those millions, though, requires a few skills one could perfect in
a few hours and a trip to the hardware store. In the back of his truck are
all the tools of the Freeway Blogger´s trade. Opening the camper shell lid
reveals his menagerie of bungee cords, hammer and nails, spring clamps, duct
tape, coat hangers and of course the cardboard signs, over 70 of them
stacked to the roof of the camper shell. There´s also a skateboard for a
quick get-away, the most costly addition to his mobile tool shed, which the
42-year-old blogger was slightly embarrassed to purchase despite looking
like he could pass as man in his early thirties.
He paints the signs on discarded water heater boxes using an overhead
projector to neatly paint the messages in a New Times Roman font, messages
that he hopes will rouse a captive audience of drivers. The signs run the
gamut from the cleverly subtle like “We´re All Wearing the Blue Dress Now,”
“Osama + Saddam = Easter Bunny” and “Rumsfailed” to overt missives like
“Bush Lied,” “Osama Bin Forgotten” and “Real Soldiers Are Dying in Their
Hummers So You Can Play Soldier in Yours.”
On the condition I call him “Scarlet Pimpernel,” the Freeway Blogger allows
me to tag along on a sign-hanging spree throughout Santa Cruz County. Our
first target of opportunity is the pedestrian bridge over Highway 1 near the
Holy Cross Church. We park in the church parking lot and Scarlet preps a
sign for display, attaching four coat hangers with white duct tape to the
10-foot-long sign that reads “Douglas MacArthur Was a Sissy” and a smaller
sign, “World War II Veterans for Truth.”
Scarlet dons large plastic shades and tucks the signs under his arm,
strolling up to the bridge nonchalantly. Sometimes he wears an orange vest
to look like a Caltrans worker, the same people that usually take down his
signs. The vest gives him a certain authority and allows him to work without
looking over his shoulder. But today he´s going casual: T-shirt, jeans,
sprigs of sandy-blond hair peeking out from below a bandana, and disco-era
sunglasses. In less than 20 seconds the two signs are up, clipped to the
chain link fence that covers the bridge, and we´re out of there. “As long as
I´m quick about it, nobody can punch me,” he says. “That´s very important.”
We pull into the rush hour traffic and drive under the Freeway Blogger´s
latest offering to the overcrowded freeways. Scarlet has a discernable core
of impish good humor and he laughs easily. “I´m embarrassed at how often I
crack up at what I´ve done,” he says as we head south on Highway 1 towards
Aptos.
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Then he lights a
cigarette. “One of these days I´m going to quit (smoking) and that´s
when the signs are going to get really big and really crazy.”
It´s hard to say how many people have seen his
signs since he began freeway blogging, but Scarlet estimates it´s in
the millions. On one freeway alone, such as the choked, 14-lane San
Diego Freeway in Los Angeles, he says Caltrans counted 130,000 cars
during daylight hours where he´d hung a sign inside a closed
pedestrian bridge. The sign, a “Bush Lied” and “We´re All Wearing
The Blue Dress Now” combo, stayed up for days, a rarity in the
Blogger´s business. “Once I realized how many people I could reach
with just 10-cents worth of cardboard, paint and bungee cord, I
couldn´t help thinking that I was on to something.”
The Highway Blogger´s signs rarely stay up for more than an hour
before someone, usually Caltrans, scuttles them away. Though there´s
not a state law specifically prohibiting homemade signs on the
freeway, Caltrans considers them a “visual hazard” and takes them
down regardless of content, according to department policy. The
Freeway Blogger argues that as long as there are commercial signs
like billboards, he has every right to keep posting his signs.
The lawsuit Brown v. Caltrans shaped Caltrans´ policy. Cassandra
Brown and Amy Courtney of North Santa Cruz County sued Caltrans
after they hung an anti-war banner beside an existing American flag
on a Scotts Valley overpass in 2001. In less than 10 minutes a
Scotts Valley policeman took down the women´s anti-war message, but
left the flag. The lawsuit contended that Cal Trans discriminated
against their views. A federal district court judge ruled that
Caltrans cannot discriminate between messages—either all non-Caltrans
signs posted on overpasses get to stay up, or they all come down.
Caltrans chose the latter.
Scarlet is well versed in the Brown case. “If I was more of a
fighter I would put up a fight when they take down my signs,” he
says. “However it did make me a little upset when I saw the Santa
Cruz Police take down one of my signs. It was like, ‘What province
in North Korea are you from?´”
So what motivates a man to drop his real name and drive around
posting political messages, not to mention the long hours spent in
his garage painting them? The answer is complicated, one that takes
a few hours to get out of him. For one, driving seems to be in his
gene pool. His father is cited in the Guinness Book of World Records
for driving through every county in the United States. This love of
travel was passed on, obviously, but the Freeway Blogger took a
slightly different direction and headed south to Mexico not long
after he graduated from UCSC.
However, what started as hereditary wanderlust soon turned into a
one-man relief organization. Scarlet would pile donated clothes and
blankets into (what else?) a VW van and find the roughest, most
remote road the van could handle and drive until he was utterly
lost. Eventually he would run into a village where he passed the
goods out to the people, many of whom, he says, were wearing rags.
In all, he made nearly 40 trips to Mexico. “It was easily the most
useful thing I had ever done in my life,” he says. “The lesson I
learned is one person can do a whole hell of a lot.”
Dashing charismatic ideologies aside, Scarlet has paid a heavy
price, one that makes him cry as he parks the truck behind a strip
mall in Aptos overlooking the roiling freeway. Last year his wife
gave him an ultimatum: freeway blogging, or her and their
one-year-old daughter.
His daughter is a year older now, living with her mother in Northern
California. He visits as much as he is allowed, posting his signs
along the way. “I feel like giving up every day,” he says. “The only
way I can justify this sacrifice is I think of all those guys in
Iraq who don´t get to drive 500 miles to see their kid, and some who
may never see their kids again.”
Rubbing his eyes, he gets out of the truck and flips through his
quiver of signs. Deciding on two, he preps them with duct tape and
wire and walks around the fence to the railroad tracks crossing the
freeway. He hangs one sign facing the northbound lanes and another
facing the southbound. I look over the side of the graffiti-colored
bridge at the cars rushing under us to see if anyone is looking up.
It feels delightfully criminal and sanctimonious to be in the
presence of a free speech offensive. A few cars honk their approval.
His deed done, the Freeway Blogger walks casually back to the truck
and gets in. Within a few seconds we blend right back into the
mundane traffic on Soquel Drive as if nothing happened. “Voting once
every four years is no longer sufficient,” he says once we are back
on the freeway, driving north to see if his first two signs are
still hanging (they aren´t) and so he can drop me off. “It´s not
going to keep the beast at bay. If people could just realize they
had a voice I wouldn´t have to do this anymore.” |
